Rocket League Worlds at Dickies Arena: three crowd days and 50 AMC screens

Six days of competition, three of them in front of a crowd, and a final that reaches far beyond the building. On September 9, 2026, Psyonix, the studio behind Rocket League, published its guide to the 2026 Rocket League World Championship, played from September 15 to 20 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas. The arena opens its doors to fans on September 18, 19 and 20. On the last of those days, the final is also shown live in 50 AMC theaters across the United States, which Psyonix says is the first time the event goes to cinemas.

Rocket League is a game of soccer played with cars, three against three in its main format. The World Championship closes the season of the Rocket League Championship Series, the official circuit known as the RLCS, which BLAST runs. Twenty teams play for a prize pool of US$1.2 million.

Six days, three of them with a crowd

The schedule splits the week in two. The first three days are played without an audience: the Play-In, an opening round, and then the Group Stage. The arena opens on Friday, September 18, for the playoffs, and stays open through Sunday.

The split means that a ticket buys more than the main event. The two smaller formats, one against one and two against two, hold their semifinals on the closed days but play their grand finals in front of the crowd, on the Friday and the Saturday. Championship Sunday then closes the week and ends, in AMC's words, with the crowning of the 2026 world champions.

Dickies Arena's own page for the event describes the same structure: a six-day tournament, three days of closed competition, then three days with the arena open to fans. The page presents the World Championship as the biggest event of the RLCS calendar.

The broadcast follows the same rhythm. On the Tuesday the main stream starts at 10:30 a.m. and a second stream at 11:00 a.m.; on each of the five other days the broadcast is listed for 11:00 a.m.

What a ticket at the arena covers

Doors open at 10:00 a.m. Central Daylight Time on each of the three public days, according to the primer. The venue's page gives a show start of 10:40 a.m. on all three. Tickets are sold through Ticketmaster; the arena lists the price only as varying, and the primer gives no price.

Inside, merchandise is sold at booths set aside for it. The rest of the program is built around meeting players and the broadcast team, at times the primer calls approximate:

• on Friday and Saturday, three signing sessions of half an hour each, at noon, 2:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.;
• on Sunday, one longer signing session, from 12:30 to 1:15 p.m.;
• on Friday evening, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m., a VIP session for photos with the trophy;
• on Saturday evening, at the same time, a VIP session with the broadcast talent and the players.

The arena's page describes the crowd it expects only as thousands of fans and prints no capacity. It calls Dickies Arena one of the event's most iconic homes.

Fort Worth's third World Championship

The building knows the event. Dickies Arena had already hosted the World Championship in 2022 and in 2024, Sheep Esports recalled on May 21, 2026, the day Epic Games announced the 2026 edition during the Paris Major. The venue's own page counts this one as the third time Fort Worth has hosted it.

The 2025 edition was played at the LDLC Arena in Lyon-Decines, France, where NRG beat Team Falcons 4-1 in the grand final and won US$300,000, according to Psyonix. NRG come to Texas as defending champions.

The city is also a stop this year for the company that runs the circuit. BLAST brought its Counter-Strike 2 event Rivals Season 1 to Dickies Arena from April 29 to May 4, 2026, HLTV reported in January. Sheep Esports noted that the World Championship would be the arena's second international BLAST tournament of the year.

The season's other large crowd was in May. The Paris Major, the second Major of the season, was played at La Defense Arena from May 20 to 24, with three days in front of fans, in a building Psyonix described in September 2025 as its largest venue to date. Fort Worth follows the same pattern of three public days.

Championship Sunday in 50 cinemas

The novelty of this edition is outside the arena. On Sunday, September 20, AMC Theatres shows the final day live in 50 of its theaters across the United States. Psyonix writes that it is the first time the World Championship is streamed to cinemas.

AMC set out the details in its own announcement, datelined Leawood, Kansas, and carried by the trade magazine Boxoffice on September 9. The broadcast comes live from Dickies Arena and is expected to run about eight hours, ending with the crowning of the 2026 champions. Every ticket holder receives a commemorative Rocket League ticket with codes for in-game items, the same Drops, rewards unlocked by watching, that viewers would otherwise earn on Twitch. Tickets are sold at the participating theaters, on AMC's website and in its mobile app; neither AMC nor Psyonix gives a price.

In the cinemas, doors open at 10:30 a.m. Central Daylight Time and the preshow starts at 11:00 a.m., according to the primer, the same hour as the main English stream that Sunday.

The 50 theaters are spread over 29 metropolitan areas, from Seattle to Miami. The release names each one, from AMC Southlake 24 in the Atlanta area to AMC Orange 30 in the Los Angeles area. Most areas have one or two screens; a few have more.

Los Angeles is the only area with four theaters. Chicago, Houston and New York have three each. Texas, the host state, has five screens between Houston and Dallas, and Fort Worth itself is not on the list.

Seven campuses and six languages

The final travels by two other routes. On Championship Sunday, watch parties are held on seven university campuses, open to registered students only: Syracuse University, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Maryville University and North Carolina State University.

Online, the English broadcast runs on Rocket League's channels on Twitch, YouTube and TikTok. For the first three days a second stream runs beside the main one, on Rocket League's esports channels. Broadcasts in other languages cover all six days: French, Spanish for Spain, Spanish for Latin America, Portuguese, German and Swedish.

Part of that coverage comes from inside the building. Psyonix lists creators who stream from the venue itself, in French, Spanish, English and Arabic, among them the French channel Rocket Baguette, whose channels also carry the French broadcast.

The field that fills the building

The field was built over a full season. Psyonix said in September 2025 that the 16 teams with the most RLCS points after the Majors would qualify directly and that four more would come through Last Chance Qualifiers, drawn from the four best-performing regions. Sheep Esports reported in May that four such qualifiers were planned, one for each of the four strongest regions.

The 20 teams come from seven regions. Europe sends six, North America five, South America three, the Middle East and North Africa three, and Oceania, Asia-Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa one each, according to both the primer and the arena's page. The smaller formats bring four two-player teams and four solo players. In its presentation of the season, Psyonix said that the winners of regional Opens in North America, Europe, South America and the Middle East and North Africa would qualify for those two titles, with the one-against-one Opens starting in June 2026 and the two-against-two Opens after the Paris Major.

The prize pool is US$1.2 million. Fans can add to what the competitors take home: Psyonix announced on August 28 that all net sales of a World Championship bundle, on sale in the game for 1,100 Credits from September 1 to 23, go to teams and players, 70% to the top 20 teams by final placement and 30% to players who win one of the event's awards.

For the building, the week starts quietly on Tuesday, September 15, with the closed Play-In. The doors open to the public at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, September 18, and the last of the three crowd days ends with the champions crowned on screens in Fort Worth and in 50 cinemas at once.

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